Anybody remember 1970's....

Anyone remember the electric control line airplane that was charged by setting the plane on a 6volt lantern battery's spring contacts for a couple of minutes? My friend had one. I also had an electric that ran from an electric handle spinning a thin cable inside the control line. The good old days of boring aircraft!!! I then had a cheap Cox .049 control line that made me dizzy and fall down, thus crashing. I spent the majority of the time trying to start that damn thing with a hooked spring starter

Remembering the 50's

my brother

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tommy D

Mattel Super Star

My brother had this plane and it flew extremely well. He ended up losing it in a thermal. If my memory is correct it had a disk on the bottom that rotated and changed the rudder for different flight paths.

Hey now,
I was flying a lot of ukies back then. Competition with the Western Associated Modelers, yep, WAM. Ten mile race (rat race), slow combat, balloon bust, didn't collect a lot of trophies but I had a lot of fun. Bought my first "full house" radio in '71 or so and learned to fly on Midwest Das Little Stick running a Veco .19. I still have the oil soaked airframe (not airworthy) and engine (runs like new!).

Ukies were still king then, every school yard had kids flying roundy round half A models and there were some fantastic ukie kits, some even converted to r/c nicely. I had fun convertingidwest profile stunters to r/c slopers. Those were the days a VW bus crammed full of planes and a friend or two off to the ukie circle or slope cutting class to fly... Hey wait a minute not that different from today...
RobII

Nope. Dont remember the late 60s, 70s, 80s, except they had something about the USAF, chasing a lady till she caught me, changing diapers, and then these half sized creatures that were SO much more intelligent than me. But I do remember the late fifties and early sixties...lots of reed valve engines, and some bigger stuff. mostly controled by two lines, and some with absolutely no controls. By the way, if you rivet your eyes on the plane, and not watch the background, you dont tend to get dizzy I like em better now, with a magic box to control em with, and no messy, noisy engine.
Although, I do feel a slight urge to go to a Ukie again...electric, of course

About 8-10 years ago, my sister bought me a clearance item from a K-B store going out of business sale. It was a park-sized (about 36") RTF foam x2 EDF jet airliner....2 ch. It cost her $6.00 (normally something of $50, I think). I never flew anything before, and it flew quite easily. I maidened it at dusk (waiting for Ni-Cad to charge), and it disappeared into the night sky...
We found it...it slammed into someone's house wall. Suffered minor injury, however, I was not keen on foam saving techniques, so I tossed it.... The EDF units were mounted by being suspended under the wing with a rubber band, rudder control was obtained by the speed control either slowing the thrust in the left or right motor. Wish I still had it, knowing what I know now.

My brother had this plane and it flew extremely well. He ended up losing it in a thermal. If my memory is correct it had a disk on the bottom that rotated and changed the rudder for different flight paths.

I had one of these back then. They flew very well and your right, they had different disks you could change on the bottom to give it a different flight path. I had many good flights with mine.

I had one of those Superstar's from Mattel as a kid. The thing flew great, till I forgot to put a disc in it. Did you know they fly in a perfectly straight line at a decent altitude when you don't put disc's in them? Never saw it again
Jag

Still have a plan of the first CL model I flew successfully - KeilKraft's 'Phantom Mite'. That was back around 1960 (that's a personal - I know plenty of great aeromodellers who regard me as that upstart new kid). When the housemoving dust settles - and here around Chicago, I understand the 'building season' is official - I'm going to adapt its 'brick outhouse' structure from 049 beam mounted engine to e-power and fly round in circles on purpose once again.

eflightray - the trick to not going dizzy flying CL is to watch the model, not the background. The first flights after a down spell are best kept short - at least now, we e-fliers have a head start on the oilies. We can set a timer to a minute - the smelly guys must guesstimate the amount of fuel they take off with.

That technique has sent a lot of FF models OOS, never mind long CL flights...

Whatever, I think RC might catch on. Now, if you could buy RC models at the shopping mall?

Dereck
I have the mag, and can get the plans from MAN for my only true stunter. The Detroit Stunter, from 1960. Fox 35, silk, and many coats of Pactra dope. Cost me about 70 bucks, which was a lot of lawn mowing back then. Have been tempted lately to build one with electric. ormaybe RC. It was a gorgeous flier on lines, maybe it could fly free